Today’s kids can’t run as fast or as far as their parents

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MATTHEWS, NC -- The track team at Crestdale Middle School in Matthews, North Carolina works hard, but according to new research, put them toe-to-toe in a one-mile race around the track with their parents when they were this age and mom and dad would have left them in their dust.

"The typical American child in the year 2000 would finish 3/4 to 1 lap behind the typical American child from the 1970s," explains the University of South Australia's Dr. Grant Tomkinson.

Dr. Tomkinson compared physical fitness test results of more than 25-million kids from the 1960s through 2010.

Over time he found an 18-percent drop-off in cardiovascular fitness levels. It appears kids today cannot run as fast or as far as their predecessors from 30 years ago.